I wrote that passage back in 2005 shortly after I became certified by the National Guild of Hypnotists.. At that time, I felt that Weight loss was to be the singular issue that my practice would revolve around. For a short time it did and then I became more involved with Smoking Cessation. I still do work with clients on both of those issues and more, but since that time I have had to deal with more traumatic personal problems which have shaped my thoughts and lead me to found The Self-Esteem Center of Long Island
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At The Department of Social Services ~ August 2009
How did I end up here? Sitting on a steel bench in a room with a couple hundred other people that probably didn't’t want to be there either? Or maybe not; some looked perfectly comfortable, just another day at the office. That is if your office is filled with immigrants speaking anything but English, screaming children, public address announcements blaring instructions about which line to stand in and a few bewildered looking middle aged men like me. So like everybody else at my end of the room, I just stared at the door.
This is the door that some well meaning social worker sticks his or her head out of every so often and calls out a name from the clipboard in his/her hand. If it’s not your name you get to sigh and go back to staring as that lucky person shuffles towards the door and disappears for a while. As I sit, I wonder whose life it is that I am living and when exactly did I becomes another name on “Santa’s Naughty List”. Never in my worst dream did I expect to find myself in a place like this. Waiting to apply for a handout (Medicaid) from the government? I had an appointment, and like a good soldier I rushed to be there on time, registered my presence and then was told to wait on the bench until my name was called. That was more than an hour ago and my ass hurts from sitting on this damn bench so long. I have no idea when that clipboard with my name on it is going to make its appearance. Honestly, I want to run away because this is not the way it is supposed to be. I have always been the provider, the hero, and the winner. But in this room I am so far removed from those feelings I no longer knew who I was, so I sit here and wait staring at the door.
There is a tape line across the floor in front of the door it is Yellow and Black obviously meaning “Do Not Cross until your name is called”. It seems to me that the line is a metaphor for being here. Those on the side of the line behind the door "have" and those on the other side, my side, "need". I wonder when it was exactly that I crossed that line from being behind the door to being in front of it. It’s not just the recent un-payable medical bills that got me here. There had to be some point in time when I crossed it and didn't know because I was never looking down. I didn’t know that I was gradually slipping across it. There must also have been a lot of time when I was simply straddling it. That's probably where I have been for the greater part of past few years. I suppose it was like bleeding to death in a warm tub. They say you just go to sleep. Not that any of that matters much anymore because right now, I am fixed firmly on the need side.
Finally the door opens and a lady with a clipboard speaks and to my surprise she pronounces my name almost correctly, so a little brightness crosses my face, maybe we are off to a good start? I smile at her and shuffle my own way towards the door. Now this door is a gateway. It leads to a maze of cheerless cubicles where your fate is going to be sealed. I follow the clipboard lady to one of them and she tells me that is my interviewer. She is the person I am here to see. This immediately changes her status in my eyes, she is no longer the clipboard lady, she is the person I am here to bare my soul to. I will plead my case to her and she is the one who is ultimately going to rescue me, she is my personal savior. Then, just as quickly, before we even sit, she tells me that I should know that she is only there to verify my information and that she has no role in the decision making process. It is all based on the income information that is fed into a computer and the decision is spit out automatically. I guess she saw the glimmer of hope in my eyes in the eyes of many others many times before.
The cubical is devoid of anything personal. None of them have anything like that, there are no photos, no decorations, nothing, and then I notice that most of them are empty. Spread about the room there are interviews going on but there are probably only 5 cubicles in use and 25 are totally empty. It occurs to me that this is most likely due to cut backs in the county’s work force. There are probably a whole slew of former county social workers on my side of that line now. So the people working in the cubical maze on the “have” side may be straddling that yellow and black line too. HMMM? I wonder if that ever crosses their mind, but I start thinking about Humpty Dumpty.
That guy had nothing on me. In the beginning of last year I was at the top of the profession that I had been working in all my life. I was making a living paying my bills raising my kids and getting by okay. But as the years went on and the economy worsened the company who's wagon I had hitched my star too fell into bad times and gradually they had to cut back and that included me. I was not worried because a guy with as much on the ball as I had could always get reconnected. Besides, my job came so easily that I was practically phoning it in. So I got some severance pay and I figured I take an extended vacation and pick up where I left off soon enough. I could not have been more wrong.
Pretty much as soon as I started looking for work I found that there wasn't much at my level available. More than that, since the industry had compressed there were lots of guys like me looking for work and I had to compete with youngsters willing to work for less money. The phone was NOT ringing off the hook in fact it wasn't ringing at all. Months went by and as I came to the realization that I was NOT the big shot I always thought I was. I could not get connected in my profession. All the good will I had collected over the years and all the favors that I had intended now to collect on amounted to zilch, Before I knew it I had also lost my health insurance and I did not have enough money to buy it privately.
Then another disaster struck. One night while driving home from a part time job I was involved in a hit and run accident. I was injured and had to go to the hospital. My car was totaled. A few days after that I was not feeling well and when I went to the bathroom I discovered that I was bleeding inside.
Back to the emergency room and this time I was admitted and spent a few days in intensive care and a few more in a regular room. All without any medical insurance coverage. I determined not to worry much about it then but when I got home and the bills started coming in I got a double dose. I truly need help which is how I ended up here so the Clipboard lady (no longer my savior) and I get down to business. It’s all very sterile and we finish quickly.
As I leave the office I catch my reflection in a glass door. I almost don’t recognize myself. My shoulders are stooped, my head is down and I am shuffling like a zombie. Who is that guy? It can’t be me can it? That guy looked like workhorse about to be sold to the glue factory. It just could not be me, but it was.
In life, you can be a victim or a player. Up until that moment, I thought of myself as a victim. Right there I made a life decision because I am a player. I’ve been through the ringer. I had faced my own mortality twice in recent months and survived. If god wanted me dead or broke I would be already. I think I was brought to this place and time just to see my reflection. It was a wake up call. I may be on the need side of the yellow and black line now but that is not my home. My home is within myself. I am the provider, I am the hero, and I am the winner. I just need to remember that. I have always been those things and even though I need some assistance right now it does not change who I am. I will accept the responsibility for my current circumstance and not look back. I have paid into this system my entire working life and if I need to tap into it to get through this difficult time so be it that is what it is there for. I am no longer ashamed of it. When I get back on my feet I will pay it forward. My grandparents and my parents survived the great depression without any help so I am luckier than they were. I stop and square my shoulders stand up straight and stride purposefully out of the office. I am committing myself to a course of action where I am the deliberate creator of my own circumstances. I see this as an opportunity because I can tell my story and I am an example of how to recreate yourself in your own proper image. Rome was not built in a day, but I have time and I have faith in myself and that is all it takes. I will not be the shell of the reflection in the glass. I don’t know that guy. This is my word and my word is my bond. Watch it happen for me and then let me help you find your self-esteem too.
Roch D. Preite BCH ~ August 2009
About Me
Roch Preite is a Board Certified member in good standing of the National Guild of Hypnotists and an adjunct Faculty Member of that organization. He regularly lectures to other hypnotists at the annual national convention He is a member of the National Federation of Hypnotists. He has authored for the Journal of Hypnotism, He is a citizen journalist on the Long Island Press, a contributing editor for Pnosis, and has has several blogs and other online presence.
He recently Penned "HYPNOSIS AND THE SINGLE GUY" for LIME Magazine (Long Island Men's Entertainment).
He did his original Hypnosis Certification training at the New York Awareness Center on 72nd Street in New York City. Roch is a certified NLP practitioner, and a Reiki Master.
Roch Preite BCH
was voted
Long Island's Best Hypnotist in 2007 by the readers of the
Long Island Press
Because of his own life experiences, Roch is uniquely qualified to work with people who have struggled with self-esteem and self-image issues.
Having overcome these obstacles himself he is ready willing and able to help his clients recover their own self worth so they can move forward in life and achieve the levels of success and abundance which is mankind's birthright.
The Self-Esteem Center of Long Island
Recover, Rebuild, and Restore
Roch D. Preite BCH
Specializing in Self-Esteem Recovery
Buttons on a String
or How I Came To Be a Hypnotist by
Roch D. Preite BCH
Life is all about choices and changes. In general terms my life was pretty good, but my health on the other hand was another matter and that’s the main reason why I’m a Hypnotist today. I have lost a lot of weight. Back in June of 2000 I weighed a bit over 370 lbs so I had weight loss surgery and lost more than 150 pounds. What had happened back then was that my dad died, and it was his death that inspired me to make some major changes. Looking at my dad was like looking in a “future” mirror for me. He was morbidly obese, and he had tried everything to lose weight. Sadly, eventually he gave up trying to get healthy, and to make a long story short, complications due to his gross weight eventually killed him. I knew I had to find something that could make drastic changes in me and I thought that weight loss surgery was the only answer.
The thing about weight loss surgery is that, it only fixes your body,but not the way you think or how you feel about food. As you heal and get healthy, your stomach does stretch out again. So with that in mind fast forward a couple of years, and I began to seriously overeat ,and I started to put back on some of the weight that I lost. I began to worry that if I didn't’ stop, I was doomed to become morbidly obese again! I also knew that dieting was never going to work for me, and I was desperate for an answer. Somehow, fortunately for me, I found my answer in a childhood memory of my father.
One afternoon, my mom and I were looking at some old family pictures and I came across one of my dad at the beach in a bathing suit, and he was thin! I asked my mom about it and she said that was the time when my father had gone to see a hypnotist. He had lost about 75 pounds and he kept it off for a few years! I was impressed, but, I could just not remember him like that. To me he had always been very fat. However, as I went to sleep that night, the image of him came to me in a dream. In the dream, he had something in his hands. It was a big round button on a string. And he was swinging it back and forth. It was his pendulum! When I woke up the next morning, I called my mom and asked her about it. She said that he used to carry it around all the time, and that he used to say that he could hypnotize you just as he had been hypnotized. Then I asked her why, if it worked so well for him, had he put back on all that weight? She shrugged her shoulders and said, she didn't’ know. But I think I do.
My dad’s best “tool” for weight loss was hypnosis, but just like me, when he stopped using his tool properly, it stopped working for him. I decided then and there that would not let that happen to me. I have come to understand that my Weight Loss Surgery was a wonderful tool, but it was not a cure for obesity. The cure for obesity is found in your head, not your stomach. So I began to investigate hypnotism myself. I was amazed. I didn’t feel like I had been dieting, and I didn’t feel like I had deprived myself of anything but the were the results staring me back in the face. I have since managed to lose more weight of that weight and for the most part I have kept it off.
Hypnosis is not a cure all, but it is highly effective in moderating all kinds of behavioral issues, Smoking, Weight Management, Stress, Self Esteem, and Anxiety Issues and others. Hypnosis is completely natural and harmless. It can work for anyone as well as it worked for me.
Biography
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